A Portrait by Number Power Play

  The duality of freedom, is one of those hidden and deep features of so-called liberal societies. On the one hand there is that very noisy freedom, of states, which asserts that they are free in themselves as they are a democracy. Their citizens have then, a set of rights and duties that go hand in hand with being the ultimate arbiters of the political fortunes of whatever cabal is ruling the country. Democracy and personal freedom, we are told, rise and fall together, are caught up in and throughout each other. On the other hand, there is the covert freedom to spend what we want and how we want. A freedom that actually creates very much of the basic social fabric of the day to day social order. That is, those companies which are able to ensure that we choose them time and time again, become powerful, and those that cannot do this or are too small or too inefficient, fall by the wayside. We live then in a doubling of freedoms: We are free as consumers and free within capitalism and it is a mistake to assume that these freedoms are identical, or even imply one another (China for one, has the latter freedom but not the former).

  What is at stake here are really different elements counted. In the first freedom what matters are individuals as numbers. They are counted then in a head count of voting. Or on a slightly wider issue, one might say that there is a way of ‘civil calculus’ that reckons up individuals. We are then concerned with individuals treated in NHS hospitals, or the number of prisoners held in remand or the number of tuna still swimming in the sea. In the second type of freedom individuals slip away, and what is counted is not people but pennies. Individuals are free then, not as a number but rather as a patron. We are free through our ability to deploy numbers (money), and not in being them. Individuals as such matter hardly at all or only for the flickering moment.  It does not matter to any shop who is buying their products, or whether an individual really approves of them or not. All that is of important is that some people (and probably a growing number of such folk) are buying goods at their shops. Individuality of the consumer is then composed only in the movements where those individuals can be persuaded into this shop and towards this product rather than that. The individual slips then into a mere set of choices and ways to influence choice. They in themselves cease to matter very much.

  We are then very used to these two rather different systems of freedom. And yet it goes without saying that we invariably confuse the two. Firstly on the simplest and most direct level, we use the language of one to describe and think about the language of the other.  We therefore talk about our democracy as if it was composed of the same kind of freedom as our capitalism. We will therefore think in terms of political parties setting out their shop windows, and individuals making informed choices based upon those windows. The fact that individuals rather seldom vote in such a rational manner is no matter. More than that, this confusion runs the other way as well. Political parties are more than aware of that calculus of capitalism and advertising, which does not need universal appeal to be useful and is both apparently effective and relatively easy. They will then attempt exactly the same move with their constituent voters. That is, they will attempt the same trick of lust, hope and fear, to influence their people for that vital moment in the polling booth – that once every few years when the people are moderately free. Democracy then becomes marketed as if it were crisps. The trouble of course is that marketing invariably rewards hype over content, so democracy merely becomes about needling citizens at the right moment, and so encouraging them to make the ‘right’ choices.

  On the side of capitalism there is a very easy equation between shareholders and citizens. Shareholders wield something akin to the power in a company that voters do in a state. And yet there is of course a deep flaw in that organization. The main voters form blocks, in the form of pension companies and unit trust groups, which wield in the name of an alleged constituency, great power within the internal democracy of companies. The result of course is that there is never much real regulation. All the more so because pension groups (but also the state as shareholder in certain banks) need to maximise their profits, through which ultimately they will be judged. They will then act as rather predictable lobby groups, pressuring always in the cause of money and the need to greed. The democracy then of companies is, like so many democracies, dominated by one or perhaps two big lobby groups (or parties).

  Finally individuals in recent years have very much been encouraged to confuse their votes with a commodity as in for instance, the very act of voting in talent shows and reality shows.

It has become a source of income in itself. It has become just another marketing ploy. We are told then that while people are no longer interested in voting in real elections they still will vote in whatever tacky show is being currently over-promoted on the television and pay for the privilege. The ‘X Factor’ is then held out to be the future of democracy, which in a strange way it might be. It is the future if individuals allow others to be making money or amusement out of their vote: that is, it is the future of a democracy that is merging with consumerism.

  And yet currently into the rather traditional power plays of democracy certain new currents are clearly emerging. The first current involves the deep problem inherent within the British system at least, of political funding. At a very deep level, the logic of the system is to ensure this problem is intractable, as it is in this very intransigence that the difference between the two freedoms lies. One ought not then to be able to buy influence in political parties. And yet of course one can, and almost always has been able to. More than that, we are in a system where the democratic take on freedom is looking a little ropey, the free hit it got from ‘winning’ the Cold War has long since vanished, and we are all rather disillusioned with political parties and voting. In such a situation when naturally enough the donors to parties are becoming more scarce, then those who are donating will invariably punch above their weight in terms of influence. Of course they do, and it is in a sense our fault that they do. That is, if we really wanted to break the power of big donors, we would either have to pay for political parties through taxation or a tithe system (a certain fraction of income could be necessarily donated to charities, churches, political parties etc. as they do in Norway). Failing this, then the logic of a system that requires money to operate and yet cannot generate income, is that there will need to be individuals funding that system, and hoping at least, to be rewarded for that funding. The problem is of course that we do not care about it enough to stop this being the case. More than that the very logic of the two freedom system allows us all to say that political parties ought not to receive large donations (from individuals or unions) and should never then be influenced by these contributions. Which is a fine statement of the divide at the heart of freedom. This ought not be the case, and yet without any other system of funding, it is the case, and there is nothing we seem to be willing to do to stop it. Or perhaps the alternative – which would be to stop the party system, would require a far greater commitment by citizens into the governing process, than they have so far shown - all the more so as the rules of how such an open system would operate, in relation to the existing powers of the state, would be very unclear. Political parties tend to become part of the system, and so embedded within it. Rooting them out becomes then reworking everything, which is of course always possible, but terribly time-consuming and expensive. From which it of course follows that given that we are stuck with these parties, we really ought to work out a way to pay for them.

  At which point two further complications emerge. Firstly political parties need to invent a rubric for understanding what their big donors influence and what they must not. Here there are two main models. The big donor might be understood as a shareholder - that is, an individual beyond the day to day running of the system, and yet caught up with its success or failure. The Tory Party traditionally then presented its shareholders as big business, and promoted their interests, across all its policies, without formally stating that it was doing so. On the other hand one might view the contributors in terms of a comradeship in arms. One is given the money because one shares desired outcomes. As such the outcomes themselves will need to be discussed and thought through. The influence bought then, is in a sense far more overt or at least open to scrutiny. One is part of the discussion or at least ensures that one’s point of few within a discussion, is heard. One is then buying the right to be more equal that one’s other comrades in arms. This is of course the rationale of Labour’s stratagem. The problem here is that in both cases, nether is ideal, and yet in a system that demands money and yet makes it difficult to get, some rubric is needed.

  Secondly and more worryingly, the logic of contributions makes the entire system more like that of advertising and less like genuine democracy. I.e. big donors need to ensure that they have value for money. As such they are likely to take control over certain key aspects of a campaign, - the ones that matter to them, and direct them. The current political campaign becomes about marginal constituencies and winning floating voters or ensuring one’s support come out. The campaign then becomes about using money to ensure that individuals’ votes can be reckoned as if they were money in the profit margins of a supermarket. Consequently what matters is not why people vote this way or that, what matters is merely the currency of voting. Now there has always been this element at the local party level. Local parties are the organizations which ensure that votes come out and that people actually do what they said they would. But of course in the traditional model, where there were fair-sized local parties, this was a matter of discussion and persuasion. Now, a model where the party workers are just not there, becomes merely about using whatever advertising and marketing streams one chooses to ensure that the vote comes out.

  The effect is then that the entire system of democracy is becoming increasingly confused with the system of consumerism we are all so used to. At which point, the situation becomes all the more complicated by the actions of the political parties. As a nation, it is clear that we have not become reconciled to the idea that our politics ought to be merely run in the same manner as our companies. We fret then about political funding, worry about the lack of commitment of politicians and invent alarming penalties on the political classes if they are seen to overtly behave like capitalists (and use the expenses system to feather nests). But then of course political parties can use this somewhat irrational antipathy for their own local advantage. Hence there are votes to be won in ensuring that the other parties are seen as shifty and somehow in the pocket of someone or other. All sides are then at it. The result is then ultimately counterproductive. - Not for the political parties, who in the best nihilist sense do not get out of the politics of the moment and winning the campaign, but rather for the political system as a whole. If what the public remember is that the system itself is flawed, they then turn their back on it. And yet of course in a democracy, they cannot. They or someone like them will vote. And if they are not politically engaged then their choice to vote or not, will increasingly resemble their choice whether to buy beans or peas. That is it will be the flicker of the advertising moment. The result is then that the very disillusion with politics is the very thing that undermines democracy. And it plays all the more into the hands of the political parties and their large backers - the very elements that people think they are rejecting. The result is that our rejection of a system makes that system all the more powerful.

  What can we do about this? In a sense the innate strength of democracy is that this is one of the very few occasions when we really can make a difference. If en mass we reacted to disliking the system by joining established or emerging political parties, then actually one really would have a chance of saying and doing something else. That is, if enough of us were actually caught up in the process of working out how to have policies and how to explain them to our fellows, then the nature of democracy and its difference from capitalism would be asserted and re-grounded. The trouble of course is, that such a pitch is very difficult in this world, where we are constantly told that we are so very ‘time poor’ (whatever that means). Consequently the logic of our current system squeezes us in the opposite direction. We are told not to engage, not to be party political (although single issues are ok), and so not to challenge that slow merging of consumerism and democracy that is so convenient to the leaders of big parties, big unions and big business. Our choice then is whether we should merely accept this received fact, or do something really radical and rejoin political parties – which for all their boredom and their faults are the only tool that we have, capable of resisting the otherwise necessarily inevitable commercialisation of our freedoms.